


Somebunny Needs to Hop In

by Zaphirite



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Episode: s03 Desperada, Gen, Rabbit Alix Kubdel | Bunnyx, Snake Adrien Agreste | Aspik, Time Loop Shenanigans, Time Travel, if anyone wouldn't stand for messing with time travel it would be her tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:15:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26164750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaphirite/pseuds/Zaphirite
Summary: Just a thought - what if someone had to stop Adrien from trying as Aspik?
Comments: 2
Kudos: 55





	Somebunny Needs to Hop In

Aspik failed.

He failed. He failed. He failed.

And so he tried again. And again. And again. 

Trust your partner above all else. 

Ladybug chose him. She knew what to do. She trusted he - Adrien - would figure it out. 

He couldn’t betray that trust now after following her every step of the way. 

When he counted the 2,000th try, Aspik broke down in agony. 

The sight of her kind eyes, looking at him in admiration and hope like every other time, broke him. Aspik crumpled to his knees in front of Ladybug, grasping his head in his hands as he screamed.

He didn’t know how many times he let her comfort him. Too many times she whispered words of reassurance while embracing him. She thanked him for trying hard and she knew he could do it.

As many times as she told him, he didn’t earn that kindness from her. 

Not once did she doubt him. Not once did she try to take back the miraculous from him. If he told her how many times he had failed, how would that change things? 

He started telling her around the 3000th try. She would step back from him, face almost unreadable. Sometimes she was silent. Sometimes she would just repeat the number back to him. 

After he cried it out over multiple resets, Aspik let her just hold him in silence. He let her warmth last for the whole chance. If he didn’t wait until the last warning beep, Ladybug would try to stop him.

Maybe she somehow understood how many times he’s tried again.

But it didn’t matter. None of it was real until he got it right.

Somewhere around the 10,830th try he was completely running on autopilot. Somehow, he got used to Ladybug disappearing each time. The sight of gold smoke brought that instinctual reaction to rewind time before the despair could set in.

Aspik had lost count somewhere around the 16,349th try. 

Higher than anyone would expect to count under such circumstances. 

The possibilities had to be narrowed down at some point. They couldn’t go on forever. 

Destroy everything that didn’t work - what was left had to be the solution. 

Traveling underground got them the farthest more than half the time, he was sure of it. Out of over a thousand tries exiting different places to the surface, they had to be out of sight from the Eiffel Tower, but not far enough that Desperada was hard to track from there. 

Exiting from a subway station more than often was too obvious. Manholes seemed to do better as long as it wasn’t in plain sight. Desperada was capable both in close combat and from a distance. 

No matter what he just couldn’t find a weakness in the little time he had.

He thought he wanted to spend forever with Ladybug, but he would give that wish up just for her to live for six measly minutes. 

“No!” 

Ladybug disappeared in a puff of gold smoke before him. 

Failed again. 

Failed. 

Automatically he rolled to the ground under a car - Desperada was still on high ground and wouldn’t see him escape from that angle.

Aspik glanced at the miraculous around his wrist. Two and a half minutes left. 

He needed to roll over to drop into the open manhole - if he stayed any longer under the car, Desperada would adjust her position and be able to see him in her scope.

But before he could move - Aspik was already falling.

He saw the underside of the car get swallowed up in bright white.

For the first time in a long time, he didn’t know what was going on. His heart began racing anew, adrenaline flooding his body.

Before he could turn his head to gain his bearings, his body hit something. The sudden change in velocity stunned him long enough, and only when he was dropped to the floor and his arms were pinned down did he realize he was caught.

He lost.

He failed. He failed everyone.

Aspik struggled against his captor, a depraved yell ripping from his throat as he fought back.

“Kitten! Cool your jets!”

Aspik’s eyes snapped open. 

Bunny ears. Fuschia hair. A blue and white mask with furious eyes behind it.

“Bunnyx?”

A very angry Bunnyx stared down at him. “Do you know how many times you’ve reset the timeline?”

“How-“

“Adrien. Do you know how many times you’ve reset the timeline and made a new one?” Bunnyx repeated with a his, pushing him down even harder. 

“Bunnyx, I’m almost out of-!“

Aspik looked to the bracelet on his wrist, not moving past the third marker. 

He wasn’t out of time. 

Her gaze followed his own to the snake miraculous. 

“You’re in my time burrow outside of the time stream. As long as you’re here, your timer won’t progress,” Bunnyx said, voice calming down.

Aspik tried to move out of her grasp, but the other hero still held him firmly. 

“Answer the question, kitten. How many times do you think you’ve done this?”

He opened his mouth, leaning up to tell her in retaliation. 

Or at least he meant to. 

“I…”

How many has it been?

“...Maybe 17,000?” He suggested, the pitch of his voice rising at the end. 

“Kitten.”

Bunnyx sighed and shook her head. 

Aspik saw her lips move and form words, but the number didn’t register in his head. 

Bunnyx let him go and sat on the ground across from him. He laid still, dazed as he stared at the white expanse above him.

Twenty-five thousand, nine hundred and thirteen times. 

That many times he used Second Chance. 

That many times he failed to help Ladybug. 

The weight of that many lost chances sat heavily in his chest. He tried to take a breath, only for a quiet sob to escape him instead.

Bunnyx offered her hand, pulling Aspik to sit up like her. He felt her gloved hand in his, squeezing tight.

It was real. It wasn’t disappearing.

After being haunted by ghosts of everyone for so long, this was the first real thing he felt in forever. Even if it wasn’t the ending he was fighting so hard for, it was something finally different.

Bunnyx didn’t move to take her hand back, letting their hands rest clasped in his lap. They sat in silence as Aspik caught his breath, slowing down to move in time with hers.

“I need your help to figure out what to do. What matters is I clear this mission and help Ladybug. I just need to find the right plan and no one else will be the wiser, right?”

With her other hand, Bunnyx flicked Aspik’s forehead.

“Ow!” He hissed, letting go of her hand to rub the sore spot.

“First off, just because no one remembers it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. If I let you go any longer, you wouldn’t make it.”

“I don’t make it? Desperada gets me too?”

Bunnyx reached out her hand again, this time making a motion like she was ruffling his hair. With the cowl on it felt more like a noogie.

“You don’t make it meaning you’ll incapacitate yourself if you go any further. Time travel is real for the one who remembers it. Do you know how long that many tries adds up to in minutes?”

Aspik couldn’t even fathom a number bigger than what he was already told. 

25,913 times…multiplied by 5? How many minutes were even in a day?

“Months, little kitten. You were already at it for three months, and you weren’t alone either.”

Aspik finally had all the time in the world to think, but his brain felt like mush.

He wondered how tired Sass must be compared to him. His selfishness must have caused so much trouble for the kwami. Turning his wrist, he stared at the bracelet, guilt sinking in as he repeated the number in his head. 

“Why stop me now?” Aspik finally mustered.

“I tried earlier once but you wouldn’t listen,” Bunnyx laughed. “Figured once it set in you’d change your mind. But you didn’t show any signs of stopping so I had to step in again. Do you know how much extra work you made me do to clean up your mess?”

She took Aspik’s hand, pulling him to his feet. He let himself be taken along to one of the walls - thousands of what seemed like windows covered every inch as high as he could see. 

“Normally I wouldn’t let you look in any of these, but you already know what happened here,” Bunnyx said flatly. 

Aspik thought it all blended together into a blur of memories. Yet each timeline he witnessed from the beginning were still clear to him. His past selves grew frustrated, then weary. He bore witness to his despair and the way his eyes deadened as he kept pressing on.

...He never noticed how he began stumbling, or how Ladybug was growing more and more worried as he stopped responding to her like he used to. How she would try to stop him at times and he shrugged off every move until he could predict each one. 

How hurt she looked each time.

Bunnyx kept pulling him forward, making him remember each and every moment. They made it halfway through before he snapped.

“Okay, okay! I get it!”

Aspik stuck his hand out and paused the time portal in front of them, curling his hand into a fist over his own face on the screen.

Bunnyx let go of his hand and crossed her arms. “Do you now? So you know what you need to do?”

Aspik turned to the other hero, mustering up his resolve. “I do. But there’s one thing I don’t get. If this wasn’t the right choice, then why did Ladybug pick Adrien for this miraculous?”

“Who knows? Well, I do know but-“ Bunnyx laughed again to herself before continuing, “She doesn’t know what I know. She thinks out of the available miraculous, that one was meant for you. Minibug doesn’t know you already had one that fit you better. She’s not supposed to!”

Suddenly, everything made so much more sense. He felt so stupid. The simplest answer was the one he had ignored. It’s not that Ladybug was just wrong - she thought she was right for a reason, and he trusted her on that. 

It never once occurred to him that despite saying they didn’t need Chat Noir at that moment, he might still be part of the winning plan. 

Ladybug wouldn’t have known Chat was never going to show up as long as Aspik was there. She trusted Chat as her partner to show up when he was needed. 

That was the trust that he was really betraying all this time. 

Bunnyx seemed satisfied. She reached out to one of the portals, swiping forward until she found a good spot and pointed at it.

“Now go on, get back out there and make the right choice. You’ll have two more minutes once you step out.”

Aspik peered into the portal, seeing the sewers he was about to jump back into. “Who exactly is the right choice then?”

“Whatever choice Minibug didn’t make in choosing you for this Miraculous. I can’t give away everything, but you’ll know.”

Bunnyx’s hand patted him on the shoulder in comfort. He put one foot out the portal before looking back.

“See you around then?” Aspik asked.

“If things go right, you won’t!” Bunnyx called out, shoving him the rest of the way out the portal.

Aspik stumbled forward into the sewers. He turned to look behind him, but was only met with the same dark walls. His hand rested against the grimy brick, feeling it scrape against his glove to register it was real.

Part of him began to wonder if he was just hallucinating from being so tired. He just wanted to wake up from this endless nightmare.

The miraculous beeped as it ticked down to the last minute. 

25,914 chances were much more than he deserved, but he was going to finally do this right.


End file.
